Strides in Time
Keep those cards and letters coming, folks! There is nothing a columnist of my persuasion likes more than responding to readers’ questions and comments. My audience gets in touch with me regularly. I am always happy to respond, although sometimes I need asbestos gloves to handle the feedback. This month a deceptively simple question caught my eye: “How do I measure my horse’s stride?”
When I need time to think, I can always fall back on that old debater’s technique of answering a question with a question. “Why do you even need to know the length of your horse’s stride?”
My first answer comes easily: Course designers around the world plan their questions based on a 12-foot stride. (Actually, I have been told that some show-jumping designers for the WorldCup Final build on an 11-foot-6
